Discursive coalitions and environmental justice: Empty signifiers in green and blue infrastructure planning in Girona, Spain

This article examines how discursive coalitions compete to define green and blue infrastructure (GBI) in Girona, a mid-sized Mediterranean city in Spain, and the extent to which they engage with ideas of environmental justice (EJ). Drawing on critical discourse analysis of 23 semi-structured interviews and municipal planning documents linked to three emblematic GBI initiatives, we identified three discursive coalitions. Green Capitalism frames GBI as a vehicle for economic growth, place branding, and funding acquisition. Commons emphasizes collective stewardship, social cohesion, and redistributive claims. Technical prioritizes expert-led planning and management efficiency. We show that coalitions compete to stabilize meanings around contested terms such as nature, resilience, and wellbeing, which operate as empty signifiers, flexible labels whose meaning depends on discursive context and around which divergent policy imaginaries are articulated. Green Capitalism is most prominent in institutional agendas, where EU funding logics shape priorities and accelerate grant-fitting project design. Commons actors contest these trajectories, foregrounding distributive justice concerns and demanding meaningful participation and recognition. Technical actors support ecological objectives but often translate justice into universal access and efficiency, which can depoliticise trade-offs and narrow recognitional and procedural commitments. The findings illustrate how discursive formations condition policy trajectories, institutional logics, and the political space available for justice-oriented interventions. Theoretically, this study advances discourse-based approaches to EJ through the operationalization of discursive hegemony in urban greening. Empirically, it contributes to the growing body of EJ research in mid-sized cities, illustrating how discursive struggles in these settings can bolster or inhibit socially just urban transformations.